English Adventure: Forward the Anglosphere!

[James C.] Bennett calls the English-speaking network civilisation "the Anglosphere". […] Its academic foundations are rooted in work demonstrating that England always had a more individualist culture than continental Europe, that the "civil society" tools of this culture were transmitted to the colonies settled from England, and that those countries have since not only prospered unusually, but also established a world civilisation rooted in liberalism. Bennett in The Anglosphere Challenge makes unmistakably clear that it is English cultural traits – individualism, rule of law, honouring contracts, and the elevation of freedom – rather than English genes that explain this success. […]

That raises a painful question. If Australians, Indians, Canadians, and even Americans can recognise the Anglosphere as a new factor in world politics, why is it something from which the Brits themselves shy? To the best of my knowledge, the only politician to have embraced the idea is Lord Crickhowell, formerly David Howell, who held several ministries under Margaret Thatcher and who, from his City experience, knows that Britain's prosperity lies with the growing markets of Asia and North America.

Our fading Anglosphere ties give us an advantage over Europeans and other competitors there. If we were to pursue a deliberate strategy of strengthening such ties, we would discover a better "grand strategy" than the present muddled shuttling back and forth between Washington and Brussels, feeling a "poodle" to both.

Is our reluctance because we fear to touch anything that smacks of the empire? […] Are we nervous that anything "English-speaking" might be thought incompatible with multiculturalism? Well, the first multicultural identity was the British one; today the Anglosphere spans every continent.

Is it politically dangerous as an alternative to Europe? That would only be true insofar as "Europe" failed to meet our needs – in which case we would need an alternative.

Or is it, as I suspect, that the Anglosphere offers us the prospect of national adventure that in our cultural funk we find too exciting – preferring to go back to the sleep of the subsidised?

O'Sullivan: [Bennett] calls the English-speaking network civilisation "the Anglosphere". […] Its academic foundations are rooted in work demonstrating that England always had a more individualist culture than continental Europe, that the "civil society" tools of this culture were transmitted to the colonies settled from England, and that those countries have since not only prospered unusually, but also established a world civilisation rooted in liberalism. Bennett in The Anglosphere Challenge makes unmistakably clear that it is English cultural traits – individualism, rule of law, honouring contracts, and the elevation of freedom – rather than English genes that explain this success. […]

As Dr. D noted, this is a very old idea, albeit one that competed with the idea that English "genes" did in fact explain "this success". However, this idea required that all non-English peoples, including the Celtic nations submerged in the British state and the burgeoning Americans accept England as the heartland of their civilization and accept the superiority of English cultural, political, intellectual and socio-economic institutions. Moreover, the English would have to equally accept that an Anglo-Saxon American or Canadian was equal, as well as Anglicized South Asians, Arabs, Africans and East Asians.

This concept was displaced by ethnic and racial nationalism for the very reasons that Stalin's "socialism in one country" stance triumphed over Trotsky's revolutionary internationalism.

O'Sullivan: If we were to pursue a deliberate strategy of strengthening such ties, we would discover a better "grand strategy" than the present muddled shuttling back and forth between Washington and Brussels, feeling a "poodle" to both...Is our reluctance because we fear to touch anything that smacks of the empire? […] Are we nervous that anything "English-speaking" might be thought incompatible with multiculturalism? Well, the first multicultural identity was the British one; today the Anglosphere spans every continent.

Perhaps Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States seek to forge their own separate paths through the murky forest of foreign affairs? Moreover, the British identity, despite contemporary demands for an English parliament, was generally used to subdue the Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Scottish identities, and had little to do with multiculturalism, even if non-White Britons currently identify as 'British' as opposed to one of the Isles' constituent nationalities. Similarly, the 'Soviet' identity did not preclude intensive Russification and the ethnic cleansing and genocide of non-Russian Soviet minorities. Indeed, only relatively recently would one want to keep the "O" if their surname was "O'Sullivan".

The idea of an Anglosphere is not new and to a greater or lesser extent it has existed and functioned for generations. All of the English speaking nations of the world have had a defacto connection by virtue of a common language and heritage that has united them since the days of the British Empire. Even though the Empire is no longer, the ties of trade, language, kinship, and natural affinity remain.

To some extent the UK has participated less in the Anglosphere as it has tried to integrate itself more into the EU, but that has been by its own choice. It could easily reverse that course and reestablish the old connections, probably to the pleasure and benefit of all.

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